


Under My Skin

by psychicmewhealer



Series: Evil Fairy Tale Series, I Guess [2]
Category: Cinderella - All Media Types, No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Alternate History, Child Abuse, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dissociation, Enemies to Friends, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fractured Fairy Tale, Gen, Hair-pulling, How Do I Tag, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, My tags are all over the place i'm sorry, Nonbinary Character, OH CRAP I FORGOT TO TAG, Original Fiction, Original Universe, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Suicide Attempt, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, Racist In-Laws, Revisionist Fairy Tale, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, To Be Continued, To Be Edited, Trust Issues, Work In Progress, and secondarily there seems to be, because we need that cptsd rep, complex PTSD, except they're not really in-laws but that's basically what it is, it's not period typical but it's typical to my alt-history, it's not that fairy tale yet, literally ellis needs some help, trauma induced hair pulling, you'll see how it comes full circle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27097897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychicmewhealer/pseuds/psychicmewhealer
Summary: Ellis doesn't know where he is or how he got there. But it's only six hours to midnight, and if he can't return to his worst enemy, he'll die by someone's hand, whether the King's or his own.--Or: what if Cinderella was even MORE emo than humanly possible--If you want the best experience, I suggest you read the first installment, "Under the Covers" (yes, I hate the title too,) before this fic. If you read this installment first, you won't understand anything and you will get spoilies for "Under the Covers".
Relationships: Original Character & Original Character
Series: Evil Fairy Tale Series, I Guess [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977856
Comments: 6
Kudos: 1





	1. 5 Hours To Midnight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pushingthesenses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pushingthesenses/gifts).



> TW's are all in tags. Please check those before you read. Safety is paramount!!
> 
>  **If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts:**  
>  You can call 1-800-273-8255 in the US | 1.833.456.4566 in Canada (not Quebec) | 1.866.277.3553 in Quebec | 116-123 in UK & Ireland | text 45645 from 4pm - Midnight ET in Canada
> 
>  **If you are going through a crisis:**  
>  You can text HOME to 741741 (in the US & Canada), 85258 (in the UK), or 50808 (in Ireland)
> 
> Please stay safe!!! You are loved
> 
>  **Excuse the really long author's notes this chapter.**  
>  I'm releasing this as a serial, not for any artistic reason, but because I am lonely and need validation, and delayed gratification bad.  
> Thanks to pushingthesenses for forcing me to write this. It's really fun to write, despite how gloomy it is. I have trouble connecting with (caring about?) people, so this has also been an inadvertent exercise in trying to empathize with a character that goes through stuff that I don't personally go through. (Rather than the previous installment, which was, in essence, a self insert getting the slap in the face I want to be given to me.) If you are not pushingthesenses, go read her fics, they are all Kylo Ren x self-insert, which is much better than it sounds.  
> This is still a rough draft and WIP, so feel free to call me out on anything dumb I'm doing :) you might even be able to influence the direction of the fic, idk. I know for now where I want the fic to end up, but who knows what twists and turns will be in the middle chapters??? And who knows if my decisions will stand???

I don’t know where I am. All I know is orange everywhere and the scratches of wheat stalks on my trousers. It’s the burning red sunset and the scorching heat that brings beads of sweat to my bald head. 

My hair used to be long. It feels like long ago, though it must have only been four or five years. The — my abuser, she told me to call him, my abuser wrung at it till it came out in patches. Now I find hairs in my overgrown fingernails instead of my head. I can’t stand feeling the hair on my head, because I’m underground at night and I can’t go back during the day.

I don’t know why I ran away.

Maybe I ran from Cordelia like a rabbit runs from a dog. I hate her name, the shrill way she says it, her tuggable braids, her tiny chin raised to the ceiling, the way her skin covers her bones instead of highlighting them, that she can eat and sing and feel while staying in the present. I hate that she woke up one morning and whined, “Ellis, help me, I had a nightmare,” and told the wall about a snippet of my memory as though it were never experienced. That I’d have to pretend her words didn’t yank me to the ever-present training that never really ended, that her words didn’t make my whole body ache, reinvigorate old wounds make it excruciating to stand straight. That she made me travel alone with a dastardly horse to kidnap a guard that returned to his nightmare because of her. That she made me help her find the dreams she escaped during the day that were the nightmares I could never forget.

But in the end, I was weak. I was angry she never knew. I wanted her to see what I saw every night and every day. I was so weak I betrayed the King and I showed her the underground. His Majesty will catch me because him  _ know _ I betrayed him, because no one else would. No one else is as weak as I am. I hate her because I’m weak because I never died in the snow. I hate her because she saved me.

I don’t hate her more. I hate her less. After she salted my wounds, she bandaged them together, and it allowed me to hate her because I can think her name. 

I hate her because of when I’m a child again in those cold dank corridors with only my rapidly falling hair to keep me warm. And when there was a boy and I dared touch his cold hand my chest was beaten into oblivion. When I almost fell to the stone floor because the hunger pangs got so excruciating and I held myself up with the force of my thumb. When there was a boy that wasn’t me but it was, and he got so obliterated, so mutilated, so annihilated that there was no one left. And through those hours, he was told his name didn’t matter, his face didn’t matter, that he was but dust in the corner, and the only way I could stay alive was to know my place, to keep serving; the only reason he wasn’t killed, which would be a mercy upon the King, that he wouldn’t be less of a waste, and in service of the King, I’m the steward of Cordelia the Daughter of the Count of Restorshire.

Because she hears my sharp breaths, my swallowed tears, my somnolent mumbles, and she extends her hand, half the size of mine. I feel her little fingers wrap between the spaces in my spiderlike hands, rubbing the little spots where the scars are, making me warm, making me present. Between the reawakened hunger and the pain, and the swallowed blood, and the cries of my abuser, she told me to call him, my abuser who beat me into the perfect steward till I don’t know what I am, she lies,  _ you’re safe. You’re here. You’re warm _ .  _ You’re strong. _

At midnight, before Cordelia starts her song, she checks in with each of us, that we’re awake and we’re safe. Without her, the King will catch me. If I don’t get back before midnight, I’ll die. If not by the King’s hand, then by my own.


	2. 4 Hours To Midnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes on the chapter change:  
> In medieval times, wheat was harvested throughout August and usually ended at the end of August. At the latest, harvest might finish in early September if the weather was really awful in August. We know the story takes place in the middle of wheat harvest time bc Ellis literally stands in the middle of a wheat field. But in England, sunset doesn't start at 6pm in the middle of August. It only starts at ~8pm in the middle of August. And in mid-September it starts at ~7pm. So having the story start at "6 hours to midnight" (meaning, around 6pm) while the sun was in the middle of setting makes absolutely no sense here.  
> That's why I retconned the first chapter to be "5 hours to midnight" (meaning, around 7pm). That might make this story take place in mid-September, when wheat harvest would be already done, so either the weather was just plain awful, or the social unrest was doing something to the harvest times. I don't know. Peasants mutinying is very possible.  
> With this explanation, though, I don't know why it's so hot out in the first chapter. Three ways to resolve this contradiction.
> 
>   * Irregular weather can be a thing.
>   * Maybe magic is happening? I don't know if anyone can actually _do_ magic because the Queen is dead, and I don't know why anyone would do it this powerfully. If it's magic, then you could just say that July weather and October sunset times are totally a thing in August. But I have no idea why someone would want to change the weather and solar cycle on some random day. So I'll discard this for now.
>   * The best explanation I can think of is that all the heat and sweat is adrenaline.
> 

> 
> Finally:
> 
> This is but the beginning of endless whump. I'm trying to get this whumpy plot + Ellis's disorder to work together and move things along without minimizing/glorifying the damage that any of this causes. That would be very bad. Trauma processing is gonna be pretty hard when you are NOT in a safe situation. But he'll figure it out + he'll get through it eventually because he's a BAMF and I love him

The King’s hand will get me first.

The world floods into me. I hear deafening whispers and horses trot on the rocky field. I feel the grass under my feet like daggers. I hear peasants’ snores from miles away. The excruciating hoots and howls of the nighttime penetrate my skull. And I hear, from a tavern of dubious existence, the King’s men clinking their beers. “Here’s to Ellis,” they toast, “the excuse for a man who started from cinders, and to cinders he shall return.”

“God save the King,” I hear, and a chorus of jovial slurps.

My heart accelerates until it beats like a hummingbird’s wings. Darkness is imminent. They’re going to get me. The King’s men will capture me and hang me. I’ll die with those words on my lips.  _ God save the King _ . God save the King, as was burned into all of us. That my life is disposable when the King’s isn’t. I can’t think if that’s wrong.

Nevertheless, my bare feet sprint on the turf, submerging into the ground with each leap. I dash as the wolves howl and the men trot to my demise. Maybe I run from justice, or from the inevitable. Maybe I run from myself. Regardless, I run from death.

If Cordelia were here, she’d tell me the King’s men I speak of aren’t real. That they have no use coming after me. That despite my (albeit uncertain) importance as a human being, the King’s men wouldn’t see me as important enough to kill. I hate her, but I would love to hear her tell me that. I’d love to hear her tell me anything. But I can’t, and all I want is to hide. It doesn’t matter if the men are real. I’m barely sure if they’re real. I’m not sure if I’m real.

So I dash through the twilight, floating like ash from a fireplace.

Water freezes my skin, and little scrapes line my feet. I don’t know how long has passed. The time has slipped from me. But the sun disappeared, and the moon has not yet arrived. Twilight is about to end. It’s four hours to midnight. If the King’s men are after me, I’ve evaded them.

Still, I’m running. 

Breathe in…breathe out. My legs feel like they’re about to fall off. One more step, and they will. I take a final leap.

A tall hole reveals itself to me. A hiding place.

I about face towards an oak tree and pounce up its course bark. My hands propel me into the tree’s sharp leaves. I thrust myself onto the cold stone roof and drag myself across it ― 

I squeeze into this cramped hole and smell the ashes ― 

I’m stuck in a chimney.

I see nothing but the outline of a child.

I feel their limbs collapsing into their body.

And I hear them―

I hear them  _ squeaking. _

I take a breath and tell the child: “I need you to get out.”

“Can’t. Under orders,” they tremble.

A chimney sweep. Obviously. 

“You can’t clean a chimney with me in it. You need me out. I need you out for me to get out.”

“I can’t,” the child repeats. “I’m under orders.”

“I’ll protect you,” I blurt out. “Just get me out.”

What a mistake.

“You can’t! He’ll get you too!”

Maybe the Grandfather will get me. He will because he knows who I am and he’ll show me what I deserve. My heart buckles and palpitates against my frail chest. I sweat ― 

No. This is a different time, in a different place, possibly a different shire. I’m not a child anymore. You’re safe, I mutter. You’re safe. I don’t believe myself. My breath shallows.

“I’m bigger than you are,” I quaver. “You’ll be safe with me.”

“I will?”

“Yes,” I lie.

Bigger breaths, bigger breaths ― 

“You thought I believed you?” The child smacks their chimney sweep in my abdomen. “Hallucination! Trick of the light!” I remind myself that it’s a child who’s smacking me.  _ A child _ . I flinch anyways and swallow my throat. My breath accelerates. I break into a cold sweat. He will get me. And the King’s men will, too. They’ll bring me to His Majesty Himself and they’ll burn me in the public square. I’ll say _ God saved the King  _ like they told me to as I return to ash ―

I had stopped breathing.

Inhale. Exhale. What would a hallucination would never ask?

“What’s your name?”

“It doesn’t matter,” they mutter.

_ Of course it doesn’t. _ What did Cordelia tell me when I said that?

“It matters to me.”

However much I hate Cordelia, she’s useful. The child hands me a blank stare.

“I know what it’s like to be told you don’t matter. I know what it’s like to feel that way every waking moment. You don’t have to feel that way. You do matter.”

The child scratches their head. They look forwards and backwards, and find no way to clean the chimney with me in it.

“I’m sorry I never asked. Are you a girl?”

“Yes.”

The child whispers. “Can I tell you a secret?”

I nod.

“I don’t want to be a girl.”

“Is it that you don’t like girl jobs?”

“Not just that. I hate being a girl. I don’t want to be a boy, either.”

I don’t know what she means, but I’ll take it. “Thank you for trusting me.”

“That’s all you’ll get out of me.”

“How should I talk about you, if you’re not a girl?”

“Like what I am. Someone you never met and you’ll never meet.”

“As you wish.”

“Do you have a name I can call you first?”

The child grows stern. “My name. Doesn’t. Ma―”

“Can I call you Mouse?”

“Why do you need to call me anything?”

“You’re a person. You deserve to be called something.”

“Is Mouse a girl name?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ll take it. Help me get out, and I’ll help you get out. Settled?”

“Settled.”


	3. 3 Hours to Midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't try anything Ellis does at home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have much to say except:
> 
>   * This fic is getting way more depressing than I thought it would - probably because empathy is like that. That's what happens when I actually try doing an empathy instead of looking at trauma voyeuristically. So, obviously, mind the tags. Some have changed since before, and the fic has gone in a slightly different direction than I thought it would.
>   * I'm kind of obsessed with [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxbMMYNG5Ek) atm - "Under My Skin" by Gargantuan - and only partially because it shares a title with this fic. Yes, the title is kind of cliche but IT WILL MAKE SENSE LATER. Not enough sense to be worth the bad title but I don't care because it shares the Bad Semi-erotic Misleading Titles For Fics That Aren't Erotic Whatsoever theme with the last one
> 


I cringe, remembering the days I was forced to peel my unexposed, calloused skin on the stone walls of the chimney. Those days, I remind myself, that were in the past. No longer am I forced into harm’s way on a noble’s whim. But my feet cringe still, for Mouse slides down the chimney like they belong there. I jump from the top of the chimney onto the roof, then off the roof, swing down the same tree I climbed up from, and I climb down.

I can’t get in the building without knocking, and I can’t knock without setting off the guards or waking anyone. But if I don’t enter, I’ll be no better than the ashes into which I’ll be burned.

Something about the front door is familiar. Something locked away in the back of my mind, not something I’ll be able to refer to ever again. The surrounding trees resting on a turret. The front door being a hand and a half taller than me. The feeling that a guard must be standing here, but not the one that is.

It’s the Gelvys’ door.

I know my way back. I could run to where everyone is, where I’ll be safe. But I promised the kid I’d save them. I could have jumped out the chimney without the kid leaving. I could have never spoken to them. I found my way into this quagmire through my incompetence, and now I have to wade out.

First, I have to open the front door.

“Guards?”

They don’t answer.

“It’s my lady Wilhelmina’s sister-in-law’s steward? I seek to enter Your Lordship’s abode to…uh…congratulate you on the union?”

Crickets chirp in response.

“It’s 3 hours to midnight. I know you don’t want to do this.”

The wind blows. The only path I have is my words. Breathe in…breathe out.

“I’ve been under the trapdoor.”

The guards feigned a lack of interest.

“I’ve lived through it, like you. What happens under there, it’s oppressive. It’s wrong.

“I’m not coming to congratulate anyone on any union. I’m coming to stop a chimney sweep from living through the fate we underwent, from being beaten into the perfect slave until they don’t know who they are anymore.”

I thought I would stop, but the words spill out. “Because” ― I find myself sobbing ― “because I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what being a person is because that was robbed from me. In every waking moment, I plague myself by being alive, and I curse myself to sleep wondering why I haven’t ended it the day before. And the reason is because ―” what am I saying? “― because of your lord’s daughter-in-law. She saved me. She dug me out of the snow and from under the trapdoor, and she showed me that I’m above ground. That we can bring everyone above ground.”

I crescendo. “I don’t know who I am. The best I can do is to give this child what I lack. If I miss the chance to allow this chimney sweep a sense of self and spare them from the eternal torture I face every day and night not even your lord’s daughter-in-law can stop me from killing myself.”

My face is a mess of snot and tears. I blink away the fog in my eyes. The guards have disappeared, and the door is open.

I tiptoe into the manor. My unfortunately bare, wet feet make me trip over the frigid stone floor. No matter; I arise and turn left for the trapdoor. 

Footsteps.

Oh no. 

A geriatric couple wade across the Great Hall. Lord Gelvy holds a candlestick in front of him, locks his bulging eyes on my dark-skinned wrist, and gasps in his shaky tenor, “Moor! Moor!”

Lady Gelvy gesticulates. “Spaniard! First you try killing our king, and now you try stealing our property!” She knocks her husband’s candlestick on the floor, picks it up, and waves it around like a whip. 

“I’m…I’m English…”

_ Like a whip. _

“We don’t allow traitors in our abode!” Lord Gelvy shouts. He and his wife follow me leftward and I freeze. 

The jeers return. My chest collapses. I’m going back — I have to run — I can’t do it — I can’t survive — 

The flame tickles my back. 

I hold my breath and exhale. I’ve been through worse. If it means saving the kid, I can survive. 

I open the trapdoor.

Every step down the narrow staircase makes my heartbeat accelerate. I breathe in…breathe out…and tiptoe. Breathe in…out…tiptoe. 

My hand feels the cold, hard stone of the cramped staircase wall, but I feel nothing. 

Breathe in…breathe out…tiptoe.

Surreptitious whispers fill the stairs. They loudly crumble in my ears,  _ I am a machine. I serve. _ They are meant to be heard and then forgotten, by all except those who repeat it until they never stop and it is all they know. Sometimes, I forget. My whole is but a sum of barely connected parts, like the logs that immolate on a fireplace. But there is a boy who isn’t me but is, and it is all he knows.

Breathe in…breathe out…tiptoe.

Do I exist? The back of my head is below me. If I exist, it is as a storybook character. Books, too, end in burning.

Someone breathes in…and out…and tiptoes.

My body finishes descending the stairs. The younglings are of all ages; I look down at all of them. Their cheeks are sallower than I remember.

“Mouse!” I howl.

The childrens’ buglike eyes glue to me. From several feet away, I hear the banging of a toe on wood. The army of eyes avert from me as if I was no more than the wall.

I am no more than the wall.

No. Hot tea and rough blankets and feet. Inns and the touch of the girl I might not hate. I am Ellis. I may not know who I am, but I am Ellis.

A voice reverberates. “You’re not going to let this distraction get in your way, are you?” It punctures my skull with a potent melody ―

“Get back to it!”

― and it doesn’t fit neatly into Scottish or English boxes.

My head is raised as though by a fishing hook. The toe I heard before stood on a wooden box. The legs belonging to the toe are covered with dark hose and a long, reddened tunic. My head keeps rising.

Sapphire eyes frame this man’s visage. And out of his hood ―

Part of me laughs.

Out of his hood is a single auburn ringlet.

Philip is the Grandfather.

**Author's Note:**

>  **If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts:**  
>  You can call 1-800-273-8255 in the US | 1.833.456.4566 in Canada (not Quebec) | 1.866.277.3553 in Quebec | 116-123 in UK & Ireland | text 45645 from 4pm - Midnight ET in Canada
> 
>  **If you are going through a crisis:**  
>  You can text HOME to 741741 (in the US & Canada), 85258 (in the UK), or 50808 (in Ireland)
> 
> Please stay safe!!! You are loved


End file.
